


Beneath These Painted Walls

by Casualmatch



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Polarized Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:15:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5368079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Casualmatch/pseuds/Casualmatch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victoria Chase is the owner of New York's hottest new photography gallery, and Max Caulfield is the perfect artist for her next showing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beneath These Painted Walls

**Author's Note:**

> (In this universe, bay > bae)

At twenty-six years old, Victoria Chase was a rising star. Her parents owned a gallery, yes, but that was all the way in Seattle and she’d established herself as a formidable buisinesswoman/artist in her own right. A year ago, she’d started her own gallery in New York City; it was small, still growing its reputation, but it had a lot of promise. A bit like her.

 

Running a gallery, you were an administrator more than anything. She still took pictures, of course. Putting her own work in her showings, though, that never seemed right. But they were still in other people’s. Obviously. She didn’t graduate from Yale for nothing.

 

Networking was key. She’d practically known that stepping out of the womb. You couldn’t have a gallery without the art, so hunting down artists and convincing them that her gallery was the one that deserved their work was an integral part of her job.

 

It usually wasn’t difficult, unless the artist in question had a better offer or a career death wish; no sane photographer would turn down a spot at a well-playing gallery that was still occupying the ‘young darling’ role in the contemporary photography movement. There was, of course, general disputes about payment, showing length, and advertising, but Victoria didn’t get to owning one of the hottest young galleries in New York City by letting people walk all over her.

 

As a general rule, she tried to avoid any type of pattern with her artists. One week, she’d be scouting exclusively fresh graduates from tiny little no-name schools, and then the next it’d be a fifty-year-old man who’d existed on the fringe of the movement for years but never had the time or opportunity to properly establish himself. Unknowns didn’t get feet in her door the same way a big-name photographer might, but it was her shtick, and that meant something. You could count on Victoria Chase to provide the latest and greatest in the movement. It had been her way of edging inside when she didn’t have the money to pay top names, and now it was practically the tagline. Refreshing. Like a bottle of Coca-Cola.

 

People didn’t come to her gallery for the same styles they’d been seeing for decades. They came for new, exciting prospects; they came to see the earliest flames begin to flicker and place bets on who’d burst into wildfire and who the wind would blow out.

 

****  
Max Caulfield, as a photographer, existed outside any kind of artistic sphere Victoria could conceive of. Her style wasn’t modern and it wasn’t vintage; you couldn’t label her a fringe artist, up-and-coming, a one-hit wonder. People knew her name, but would never speak it in the same breath as Diane Arbus or the like. She appeared in bursts, churning one piece of inspired work after the other, her name lighting up every photography magazine in the country, and then she was gone. Like she’d been struck blind and deaf until she hadn’t. Her work was startling, strange, unsettling, and utterly, utterly beautiful.

 

She was everything Victoria’s gallery represented.

 

Victoria was aware she wasn’t exactly Miss Congeniality in high school. That was practically a given. But she liked to think that it had been eight years since she’d left Arcadia Bay, and eight years is a long time to sit and think about the fact that your best friend was currently rotting in a jail cell- sorry, _revitalization center_ \- for murdering a girl not unlike yourself in cold blood.

 

Maybe not cold blood. Maybe not murder. Accidental manslaughter, they’d ruled it.

 

And kidnapping, and attempting to take photos while she was drugged up on god-knew-what.

 

Anyways, Victoria liked to think she’d changed.

 

****

It wasn’t as hard as Victoria had anticipated to get in touch with Max. She’d been imagining some kind of social recluse who ventured out from her rural North Dakota cabin once a year to stock up on whiskey and cigarettes, and considering this was Max, more film for her analogue.

 

Her Facebook profile was relatively normal. Victoria pretty much knew everything- born in Arcadia Bay, attended Blackwell Academy high school, graduated from California Institute of the Arts. Her posts were inconsistent. They’d appear daily for weeks, noting her new favorite tea flavor or plugging a magazine spread  and then disappear until she inevitably decided to surface again. Not unlike her art.

 

It only took a few minutes to send her a message. She pretty much had a form at this point- introduce herself, who she was- or who’d she become- and what she was interested in. Then she proposed meeting times and dates-offering to fly out to California, of course- and closed with a thanks.

 

Browsing her photos, it looked like she still hung out with the high school crowd. Warren had several appearances, as did Kate, Dana, and even Alyssa from time to time. No relationship, it seemed. And, looking back several years, there didn’t ever seem to be one.

 

****

They met in a diner in a tiny town near San Francisco. “This place always reminds me of the Two Whales,” Max said over a whipcream-laden waffle.

 

Victoria, who had tentatively ordered some eggs, smiled. Little Frankie’s was different from where she was used to having client meetings, but she could make it work. And it did, she supposed, have a sort of charm.

 

Before she could respond, an old, weathered-looking woman stopped by to deliver her eggs. They were cold and runny, but Victoria managed a bit anyway. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she recalled a similar woman who had been at the Two Whales. “Does she remind you of that waitress? I can’t remember her-”

 

“Joyce,” Max interrupted. “Joyce Price.” She stabbed her waffle. “A little bit.” Victoria mindlessly pushed her eggs around on her plate. She wasn’t going to eat this, but Max-or someone- might feel offended if it looked like she hadn’t touched it at all. “She was Chloe’s mom. We talk sometimes”

 

Chloe. The girl Nathan had shot. “I always think-” Victoria paused. “It was so awful when everything with her happened.”

 

Max nodded. “Yeah, pretty awful.”

 

Discussing people who had been shot to death in the bathroom of their high school was a hard segue to pictures in galleries, but Yale degrees and New York hotshot statuses aren’t handed out behind bleachers for peanuts. After a few seconds, Victoria began to speak. “So what have you been doing since high school?”

 

Max shrugged. “Went to college. Took some photos. You know.” She smiled over another bite of waffle. “And I guess you started a pretty sweet gallery.”

 

Victoria nodded. “After a few intermediary steps. I’ve seen your work, and frankly, it’s exactly what I’m looking for. There’s going to be a new showing in a month, and I’d like to showcase you-your work, that is.”

 

“Okay,” Max said. “You can just pay me whatever. I can send some of my best recents if you give me an email address.”

 

She blinked. There was no haggling, no debate, no questions, just...ambivalance. You can just pay me whatever. That was insane. Did she even want a real career as a photographer or was it just  a hobby? If it was, would she pour so much time into it? Was it because they had known each other in highschool?

 

“Well, um, standard rate is-” Victoria stumbled over her words. Victoria never stumbled. She was confidant, precise. It was an image she had spent years working to achieve, brought down in thirty seconds by one phrase from some unknown photographer she’d gone to highschool with. “I-uh-that is to say-”

 

“Victoria?” Max asked, tilting her head slightly.

 

“I’ll, um, get back to you,” she finished lamely. “I can make you an offer once I evaluate your work and we discuss things like the length of showing.”

 

“Alright, sweet.” Max wiped a drop of syrup from the corner of her mouth. “What’s the theme of it?”

 

“I was hoping to make it a showcase of you, actually.” The words popped out before she could stop them.

 

Victoria had most certainly not planned on Max starring in her own spread. Her original idea was to feature a variety of peripheral artists- names that were known, but not especially recognized.

 

Max smiled. “Really? I’d be honored.”

 

“I’d be honored to have you,” Victoria replied.

 

****

Approximately thirteen hours later, Victoria kicked off her heels and fell on her couch, finally back home in Manhattan.

 

Opening up her laptop, she went straight to her email to check for the photos Max had promised. They were situated inside her inbox, practically begging her to download them.

 

They were everything Victoria had been expecting and more.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
